


the mouth remembers luxury, and all transparent things

by Tepriyalles



Category: Snowpiercer (TV 2020)
Genre: F/F, Let Till Say Fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25641670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tepriyalles/pseuds/Tepriyalles
Summary: Till's working theory about all this was pretty easy to sum up:1. She was pretty sure she hated Melanie Cavill2. She was pretty sure every single passenger on Big Alice hated Melanie Cavill3. She was pretty sure something about number two pissed her off.
Relationships: Melanie Cavill/Bess Till
Comments: 16
Kudos: 68





	the mouth remembers luxury, and all transparent things

**Author's Note:**

> I know Melanie/Audrey is Right There but if I won't write the improbable ships held together by an intrusive gay thought and a twist tie, who will?

It was reflex, the first time an Aliceman pulled a knife on Melanie Cavill, for Till to throw up a forearm, knock it clear out of his badly clenched fist, keep pushing down until she had his wrist in her hand and his arm levered up behind his back so far he yelled in pain even with his cheek smushed up against the rumbling wall. 

“Thank you, Brakeman,” Melanie said, quiet and formal, even though Till knew, since the rebellion, Melanie knew her name. 

It was better, though, and they both knew it, that Till wasn’t someone she knew. It was better for Till to answer, “Just doing my job, ma’am,” as she carted him off to lockup for disturbing the peace. Knowing Melanie Cavill as anything more than a name was a dangerous thing, now. 

Much like Wilford, here, Melanie had a myth on Big Alice. She was their great deceiver, their Judas, the thief who’d stolen their livelihoods away in the icy night. Till knew some of it was total horseshit — that she had been an incompetent no one among his mechanics was laughable. Till had seen, first hand, Melanie was an uncommonly brilliant engineer. When, midway through precious minutes of a tense negotiation with a child, the wheels had begun to turn, and an ice-covered Melanie had crawled up through a tail hatch that had been hard-sealed for revolutions, no one doubted she had locked Alice back out of their engine. She knew Snowpiercer like no other miserable spark stuck inside her. 

Other bits of the myth, Till could never know for sure. She chose not to believe. That Wilford would have let them all aboard that day, that it was Melanie who chose to throw back the stowaways, his own hierarchy of cruelty aboard Alice seemed to instantly disprove, but his own passengers — starved, militant in discipline, feral in cruelty— swore to his words: His heavy fist was necessity only, they said, for what Melanie had stolen. 

Layton wasn’t hungry for another war. He let them aboard. One train, he said, cracking them open to a second entire world. 

Melanie had deprived Alice of its leverage. For that, for starting up the train, she was promised normalcy. For himself, he had one demand. Mr. Wilford would participate in their unformed democracy like any other citizen, or he could stay locked in his half of the train with whoever wanted to stay his course. 

Till wasn’t surprised there were two trains, still. And Alicemen, free to wander, held a ripe grudge that Melanie could, too. 

* * *

The second time it happened, Till saw it coming. Melanie, exiting the Night Car in her unassuming grays. Pausing at the noodle stand, speaking softly to someone inside. A man with a Wilford badge still worn proud and high on the neck of his security blacks. Drink tokens on the counter. Bottles beside his clenched fist. Dull calculus in his darting eyes. 

She had time to think about it. Her working theory about all this was pretty easy to sum up: 

  1. She was pretty sure she hated Melanie Cavill 
  2. She was pretty sure every single passenger on Big Alice hated Melanie Cavill 
  3. She was pretty sure something about number two pissed her off. 



Till had to walk fast to get there first, to warn him with a baton crossed over her chest and stare down the glass bottle one swing-down away from cracking across the back of Melanie’s head. 

Melanie turned. She took in the whole scene at a glance. 

“If you drop that thing in the washbox now, you get to keep having your night,” Till said. 

The Aliceman eyed her up and down, then spat on the floor, narrowly missing her boot. “Fuck you protecting her for? What I seen about this place, I’d be doing you lot a favor, too.” 

Till flicked her baton to full length. “I don’t like your tone, asshole,” she said. She was going for calm, but heard the growl in her own voice as the last word snuck out anyway. “Threaten the chief engineer, you threaten the train.” 

When Melanie’s hand settled between her shoulder blades, she felt every muscle in her body seize, then relax. 

“It’s alright,” she said, soft and low and even. “I was just leaving.” 

Till watched the bottle, sure it was going to come cracking down any second. 

Instead, he let out one more muffled curse, slammed the glass into the washbox hard enough to feel the sound in her teeth, then stood aside with a mock-gallant sweep of his arms, swaying on his feet, waving them past. 

Till kept herself between him and Melanie all the way through. 

More than that, she fell into step behind her. Tailed her all the way out of third. 

It wasn’t third, anymore, but no one cared. The names stuck to the places even when the people changed. Even the people didn’t change that much. People liked noodles. People liked the guy making noodles. People like the people they were fucking, the places they were fucking in. People stayed. 

At the last door, Melanie stopped. Turned. She reached out and clasped Till’s arm. 

“Thank you, Brakeman.” She stared Till straight in the eyes in a way that made her feel ice-skewered. Even back when Till had only seen her a handful of times, when she was head of hospitality, ostensibly nothing more than the face of civility, and when Till was no one at all, Melanie’s eyes could freeze her in her tracks. They carried a severity that rivaled their planet’s all-destructive cold. 

“It’s Till,” she said gruffly, because this time, there was no one else to hear her pretend this was her job. 

Melanie smiled at her, and her stomach flipped. “I know.” Her hand squeezed. “Thank you, Till.” 

Till stood there, at the door to second, for several minutes after Melanie was out of sight through the porthole. 

* * *

The third time, she got grabbed. 

She almost bashed his skull in before she saw the face attached to the hand that had stuck out of a doorway and yanked her inside. 

“Bennett?” 

“No time,” he said, and kept tugging. “She told me we can trust you. If anything happened. Well, now she won’t even let me in so I sure as hell hope she meant it.” 

“The fuck, Bennett?” 

“Something happened. Shit. I don’t know what.” 

She fell in step behind him, anxiety rising. 

“I only heard the end of it, but it wasn’t good. Crashing. Banging. In her cabin. She sealed herself in. I can’t open it. Believe me, I tried.” 

He kept talking like Till was asking more than ‘the fuck?’, but he also kept walking, so Till kept trailing, listening, waiting for it to make sense. 

“She said ‘go away’ when I said I was going to get the circ saw if she didn’t tell me she was alive, so I know she’s in there, but I don’t know if she’s hurt, if someone’s keeping her in there, if —” 

He stopped outside the first door to the engine sector, guarded by two of Andre’s men. She recognized one. Didn’t know his name, but could picture when he had his red flag tied through the top two button holes of his shirt. They gave her a look, but it was a friendly one, if anything, and let her pass. 

She hadn’t been up here since the revolt. It looked… the same. White. Small. Rattled like a jar full of their bones. 

Bennett waited till both doors sealed behind them to bang on the smaller one beside them. “Melanie? Mel, for fucks sake, at least tell me you’re alive?” 

Silence. 

“Fuck!” He kicked the door. His chest heaved. In. Out. In. “I brought Till.” 

Another second’s silence. Then, without warning, the door lock hissed its release. “Send her in. Just her.” 

Bennett warred with himself. He lifted a hand to the handle. 

Till pushed past and in, closing it behind her before she even looked, hearing it seal shut. 

Turning, the first thing she saw was Melanie. She sat on the floor, slumped against the side of her bunk, clutching the phone-remote that controlled her door lock in one hand. 

The other was dripping blood. 

She saw the body next. A man. Big. Dressed in a snowsuit. A pen stuck out of his eye socket. Not a sharp one, not a clicker. The cap thrust out into the room, the dull, round end shoved deep. The force of it had exploded the eyeball. 

Everything rushed into place. The smell of it — fear, sweat, body goo that should never see daylight. She clapped a hand over her mouth, fighting back hard against the urge to wretch. The frozen bodies she’d dealt with were nothing like this. Neither were the ones she’d gutted in the Night Car. 

“He came in through the maintenance hatch.” Melanie’s voice was empty. “While I had the train. I thought it was Bennett coming to take his shift. He got a strip of sheet around my neck from behind. Dragged me all the way back in here — mine was the only door open, you see.” 

There was something so clinical in her words, like she’d sat here, playing it back like a recording, watching herself until she had boiled it down to nothing but actions and reactions, causes and effects. 

“If the sheet wasn’t stiff from the cold, he’d have had me. Instead, it got one side of my throat, but I could still breathe. If he’d kept me out there... If he’d kept on his helmet…” 

Her eyes squeezed shut, head slumping back against the bunk, and all at once there was nothing clinical, nothing rehearsed about her words. “He’s sending them, now. He’s sending people to kill me. No one knows about that upper hatch but the men in this engine and him.” 

Till stared at the body. Stared at Melanie. Stared at the papers strewn across the floor, the clear signs of the struggle. Melanie’s feet were bare. It all pulled together into one vivid image of the moments before: Melanie, sitting at the helm on the late shift, boots kicked off, feet tucked up beneath her, watching the neverending rush of ice. 

“I’ll take care of it,” she heard herself say. 

Melanie looked up at her, stare piercing. 

“The body,” she clarified. “I know the boys at the door. I know what to say. You weren’t even awake. He tried to hijack the train.” 

Melanie’s gaze could have skinned her to the bone. "You’d do that for me. Why?” 

Till shrugged, because she didn’t like to think about that too hard. She was, after all, pretty sure she hated Melanie Cavill. But she was also pretty sure she wanted her alive. 

“Train needs you,” she said, and set about removing a pen from a dead man’s eye. 

Later, as she watched a still bloody, beginning-to-show-bruises Melanie stand on a chair and weld a new lock to the upper maintenance hatch, one that wouldn't be opened by anything on Big Alice short of loud, unconcealable power tools, as she watched deceptively strong arms hold up the torch, sparks flying around her face shield, Till admitted something. 

Since it clashed with her working theory, she said something else. 

“He’s not going to stop.” 

Melanie stopped. She stepped down from the stepladder. Flipped up the shield. “No.” 

“You need protection.” 

A small, wry, almost pained smile crossed her lips. “I did okay, tonight.” 

Till arched an eyebrow. Melanie’s throat was a lopsided purple. Her heels bled on the floor where she’d scrabbled them against the metal, trying to get free. The sight pinched something in Till, something she didn’t want to think about. 

“But, point taken,” she added carefully. She set aside the tools. Stripped off her gloves. Crossed the floor to stand right in front of Till. Shorter, without the hospitality heels, with Till in her boots, but not much. Melanie was a woman who felt very, very tall, no matter who she stood beside. “Are you offering?” 

Till thought about it. No one’s jobs were real, anymore. People who knew how to do things with the supplies from Alice were grabbing whoever they needed to get those things done. Brakemen were wandering around, breaking up fights between First and Tailies. Stopping looting in the cars that mattered, except sometimes they were the ones looting the cars that mattered. Ignoring looting of the useless luxury in First. Watching Alicemen with nervous eyes. It didn’t feel like a job anymore. There wasn’t law, yet, to enforce. She was a bouncer for a club whose sole entertainment was petty argument, petty violence, petty theft. The police of lettuce and strawberries. 

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I guess I am.” 

But none of that had been the first admitting. The thing she admitted to herself, watching Melanie Cavill stretched up and welding molten metal above their heads. It wasn’t new, not exactly. It was… Well, it happened before. Back when Melanie crawled out of the guts of Snowpiercer after her near escape from death and told them she could get them the train. When Layton let her speak, then asked Till if she thought, after that really bolstering speech about what a monster she was, she could be trusted. Till remembered, in the moment, she’d said something bitter and right, something like ‘I don’t see what choice we have.’ 

But what she hadn’t said, what her brain had unhelpfully prompted when faced with a sweaty, steel-eyed, jacket-off Melanie Cavill with a smart, soulless plan peeling off her thin, pale lips, was, “Fuck. She’s really hot.” 

Till tried really, really hard not to think with that part of her brain. 

* * *

Melanie moved her into the engine. She’d never really unpacked in Second. Repacking, after the breakup, had been as easy as stuffing her dirty laundry in the front pocket and one picture in the back. By then, there was nowhere to move in Third. She’d been sleeping in lockup ever since. She didn’t know why she didn’t say “No” when Meanie offered to help her grab her things. Maybe it was the strangeness in her smile, the emptiness in her eyes, that seemed to say she didn’t want to be left alone in the room where she’d just killed a man. Maybe she was just tired. Distracted. Whatever it was, she didn’t argue when Melanie retrieved her socks and boots from the command chair, slipped them on right over the dried blood on her feet, and followed her out into the late night halls. 

Melanie watched her stuff an undershirt back in her bag in the open cell in silence, arms crossed over her chest, head tilted sideways. It was clear there was only one bag. Till was disproportionately glad Meanie didn’t offer to carry it. Instead, she held the door, and let Till lead the way back. 

“Jinju didn’t tell me,” she said halfway through First. 

Till blinked. She shouldn’t be surprised Melanie knew about them. She knew Jinju and Melanie had been… close. But, thinking back, that was it. That was all she knew. They were close enough for Jinju to warn her away. Close enough Jinju knew her secret. She didn’t know how, though. Or why. 

“I guess I can’t be surprised. She didn’t appreciate that I took up with the rebellion, either. Hasn’t spoken a word to me since. I see supply reports. Layton doesn’t know what to do with them. But that’s all.” 

Till felt a strange relief at that. Stronger than it had any right to be. 

“We talked,” she admitted, not knowing why. “After. Before Alice.” She shrugged, bag bumping her hip. “She seemed… okay. She’s still okay, I’m sure.” 

She didn’t realize how much she’d tensed up till she felt Melanie’s hand between her shoulders. Her step faltered. 

“Me too,” she said, simple and calm, and Till felt her tension bleed away again. 

It was so strange, that this woman’s hand had that particular power over her. She knew what Melanie’s hands were capable of. 

It was like she kept saying. She was pretty sure she hated her. 

The rooms in the engine were small, sparse, and shockingly comfortable. Till felt the bunk sink under her as she sat. Melanie leaned in the doorway. Her own room, the now-purged crime scene, stood right across the narrow hall. All of a sudden, Till was dying to be alone, couldn’t stand the feeling of Melanie’s eyes on her. 

“You should take care of your feet,” she snapped, much more harshly than she’d meant to. Slowly, Melanie nodded. She stepped further into Till’s room. 

“The first aid kit in mine is basically empty,” she said, and Till tried not to think about what that meant, about how many times and ways Melanie had been hurt on this train. She extracted a white box from the top cabinet and sat in the desk chair without asking, beginning to unlace her boots. Somehow, the impotent, aimless anger in Till’s gut wouldn’t rise far enough to snap at her, to try and chase her away. She just stared, slumped near in half on the edge of the bunk as Melanie’s spidery-sure fingers ripped open an antiseptic wipe. Dabbed at her heel with the tiniest hiss, foot tucked up high on the chair, chin on knee. 

Eventually, both rested, bandaged, on the floor again. Grays cuffed. Trashcan full of pinkened wipes and wrappers. She closed her eyes. Tipped her head back against the humming wall. Till could see her breathing. Could see her swallow. She clenched her hands into fists and, finally, looked away. There was something wrong with her. 

“We should get some sleep.” Melanie’s voice was… kind. 

Till heard her rise. Bare feet padded towards her. A hand cupped her cheek, smelling faintly of alcohol, neosporin, and copper. She looked up. 

“Thank you, Bess.” 

Then she was gone. 

Before she slept, that first night in the engine, Till shivered, tossed, and turned for hours.

* * *

It was strange, telling Roche. He looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “You. You’re gonna work for the deceiver in chief, the engine bi—”

“Yeah.” She stuffed her hands in her pockets. “She needs somebody, boss.” 

“You don’t get to call me that anymore.” He frowned. “Well, gimme your stick then.” 

Till almost did, unlatching it at her back, then stopped, hand on its hilt. “There aren’t Brakemen anymore,” she said. “Not really. How about I hold on to it till there’s someone else who’s gonna use it right. Okay?” 

Roche kept frowning at her, then nodded his head, curt and disinterested, and returned to his breakfast. 

Till returned to Melanie. 

* * *

The next time felt like a long time coming. There was a certain inevitability about the Melanie Cavills of the world and the fact that sometimes, dangerous people needed protecting from themselves. 

“You’re not a Breachman!” Till yelled, rushing to catch up with Melanie, already halfway suited-in to the bulkier grays that would protect her from the outside world. 

“I’m better,” she said, pushing on, long legs carrying her through the crowded, rattling halls with an ease Till, in pajama pants and a big old t-shirt, envied. “I know Snowpiercer.” 

The alert had gone off in the early hours, when Melanie had the train. Since sealing the hatch, they’d had no intruders. The engine was never quiet, but it was loud only with the constant crush of breaking snow and humming machines. Melanie worked. Till… thought about stuff. Too much. Worked out a good workout routine in her little bunk — chin-ups on the cabinets, pushups at ten different angles on the bunk, the drawers, head up, feet up, back again. Just enough floor space for crunches and planks without having to go out into the engine room and risk seeing that kid driving the whole damn train. She kept the door open, though. She listened for trouble. But Melanie wanted backup, not a babysitter, and that was fine by Till, too. 

And, for a week, she hadn’t needed anything else. Hadn’t had anywhere to go. 

She was going now. All the way through to the tail. The tail, where Alice was straining at her hinges. Where they’d cut through the door instead of opening it, so there was no backup seal. Nothing to close. 

“Melanie!” 

She caught her in the Chains, hooked her fingers in the helmet dangling from Melanie’s wrist, trailing behind her hips to better fit through the morning crush. The faces passing by were clearly unnerved by the shaking, but they hadn’t heard what she had, what Javi had said to Melanie, right outside her door. They were oblivious to the real danger just forty cars back. 

Melanie looked down at her restraining hand, then up with disdain so raw it all but punctured Till’s lungs. _Don’t get in my way_ , that look said. _Or you will be crushed._

“How can I help,” she said instead of what she wanted. _Stop. Wait. Don’t._

Melanie’s eyes softened. “Help me hook up,” she said, continuing down into the tail.. “Put on a helmet. Don’t come anywhere near the bridge, but be on comms with me. Stand here.” 

She stopped between cars. These had been no man’s land, the defensible barrier between Third and the Tail. Now, the walls were covered, ceiling to floor, in graffiti and murals memorializing the dead from all the drives forward that had never gotten the Tail farther than this. Strips of red cloth had been tied through the chain links topping each half-barrier. Till knew which one was hers. 

Melanie pushed her two steps back. “Here.” The other side of extra, outer-facing doors. She took Till’s hand in hers, thick gloves against bare skin. Raised it to a clear, closed panel. Till saw the lever inside and understood. 

“No. No way.” 

“If I say pull, you pull.” 

“No, I don’t have the chip, I —” 

“That alarm you heard? There are stages. The one going now is compromised integrity, no breach. If one more goes off — temperature change at the trainbridge — anyone two and up can pull the disconnect when there’s a non-essential breach.” 

_“Nonessential?”_

“Bennett could do it from the engine, but I can’t… I can’t call it on the radio. I may—” She cast her eyes over her shoulder. “I may have to set it off. The breach alarm. That doesn’t mean it’s over. Don’t pull till I say so. Can you do that for me?” 

Her stare pierced Till through. There was no saying “No” to that stare, those eyes, the sure set of that jaw. This was the Melanie of the myth years, director of their fate. 

“I— yeah. Okay.” 

She nodded, attention instantly elsewhere, already gone to the trainbridge. “Hook my tube in when I latch the helmet. You’ll reach it faster.” 

On went the helmet. The air tubing was rippled and stiff. It clicked into place with a twist and a small, mechanical hiss. 

“Is that right?” 

She nodded, then spared Till a quick, wild smile through the face-shield. 

Then, she was gone. 

Till dropped below. Got hold of a spare helmet. Crawled back up the ladder. Listened, with clenched hands and sweat on her brow, as Melanie talked to the Breach Team on the close range comms. They struggled with something unwieldy in the limbo between Snowpiercer and Alice. Clanking. Banging. Cursing. 

Melanie ran out of patience. 

“How long till we bend south?” 

Bennett’s voice cracked through the helm on the main channel. “Twelve minutes, if I slow twenty percent.” 

“No. We don’t slow. There’s not time to install the new seal from here even with fifteen. Not before that curve cracks it all the way open.” Two seconds of static. “I need to go out.” 

One of the Breachmen cursed. “And do what?” 

“Patch. I pull, you patch. Patch now, replace when we’re straight south again.” 

“She’s crazy. She’s fucking insane. We have time, boss.” 

Till could hear the panic and anger in the young man’s voice. She didn’t expect it to go far. 

The boss, then, Bojan Boscovic himself, distinctive voice loud but subdued in Till’s ears. “He’s right. Put your head to it and we get it done.” 

Melanie, harsh. “You’re wrong. We can’t find the source from in here because something’s wedging the frame off angle. If I don’t go out—” 

“You said yourself, no time!” Boscovic bellowed. “You know Boki would be going if that would make the goat eat the wolf. No. We seal her up. This time, no cold for Breachworker, no cold for you.” 

The silence that followed shook Till to the core. Melanie’s next words, when they came, had an odd resignation to them. She’d heard it only once or twice, all since the revolt. It was the voice she used with Layton, when she knew he was wrong, but it wasn’t her call. With a Tailie who tried to hawk her a grapefruit right outside the engine door, when she knew the ecosystem which produced it was destroyed, and it was now more priceless than anything she could offer him, but she would take it and leave him without a reprimand for what he had destroyed. 

“I hope you’re right.” 

Fuck. 

This, Till thought, clutching the rattling siding, was not an okay time for Melanie to let someone else be wrong just because it wasn’t her unilateral time to be right. 

Double fuck. 

Till didn’t know how to make the comms work in the breach suit. 

“Melanie?” 

Nothing. The bang of metal on metal. She pulled off the helmet, looking for anything, a button, a switch. Nothing in sight. 

Cursing, she dropped back down the hatch in a half controlled slide down the ladder, feeling the sting of the pocked metal on her palms. She struggled into the breach boots. Pants. Arms. Gloves. Got her hands twisted up around her, the hot air tubing locked in. 

“You have seven, Mel.” Bennett’s voice, forced. “I can still get you thirty seconds if I slow.” 

Till slammed into the noise and echoes of the join compartment, heaving breaths fogging up her visor. “Wait.” 

All eyes wasted precious seconds turning her way. She braced a hand on her knee, winded. There was no cold here, yet. Just wrenching, straining metal and dully oppressive heat. 

“You can’t be in here.” The younger Breachman took a step towards her. 

“Oh for fucks sake.” Till held up a hand, waved it around at nothing. “Let her go out there. Did everybody else forget who the fuck she is?” 

The last pair of eyes in the room turned away from the torch in her hand to look at Till. 

“She’s the one who built this tin can! She knows Snowpiercer better than me, or you, or you, any of you. She has a plan, let her try her fucking plan. Let her. Go. Outside.” 

It took everything in her, as Melanie hung the gas hose over a rung and hopped down to the floor, not to take it back. Not to say, _Stay._

“What do you need, what has to happen?” Till wasn’t giving anyone time to say no again, least of all herself. 

Boscovic stared like she was a madwoman, but it was enough silence for Melanie to say fifty words, and climb towards the upper hatch. 

“Feed me the MIG through the intake. Whatever is wedged in Alice’s face plate, I’m going to try to break it off. If I can’t, the weld heat and the cold will be enough to warp it. It’s going to pop, the second the air can get out. You’ll see the leak, then. Patch it before we turn, and we won’t break in two.” She moved into the airlock. “Till. Get out of here. Boys, seal me in.” 

Till didn’t wait to see her be right. She booked it back to the memorial car. She heard the death-rattle of cold flooding in on the radio. Heard the second alert going off by Bennett’s mic. Heard him call, “Two minutes, Mel!” Waited, hand on the lever, imagining she could hear sparks over the rush of the wind, waiting for the worst. 

The words never came. Instead, the Breach Team cheered, and Till slumped down the wall, and waited to escort Melanie home. 

* * *

It took time to install the new lining. Melanie worked through the whole thing. Till listened to the uncompromising obedience, now, with which the Breachmen took to Melanie’s orders. She remembered, before, when the most that most people knew about her was hospitality and the voice of the train. 

No crowd gathered to see her emerge, helmet under arm, hair loose and sticking to her temples, neck, even the corner of her mouth. Till understood, then, how it had been almost completely a secret, that Melanie Cavill was an engineer. She wondered, in seven years, just how many times they had been saved. 

She approached Till with an intent, indecipherable look in her eyes. Till scrambled to her feet, feeling a bit like she’d been caught napping on the job, but Melanie hardly seemed to notice. She just kept getting closer, and in a space as small as a single joint between Snowpiercer’s carriages, there was a limited amount of closer to get, until she was holding Till’s face in her hands, helmet between her knees, turning her left, right, left again. Studying her. Till turned red. After a still, silent final second, Melanie released her without a word, and started back up the train. 

Till scrambled after her, suddenly realizing she still had pajamas on under her stolen breach suit, hadn’t eaten a scrap yet today, and Melanie Cavill’s hands had left what felt like snow burns behind on her skin. 

* * *

Melanie watched her all through breakfast. Whatever was making rations ‘equal’ was also making them strange. Some piece of fruit, some vegetable, some mystery protein distributed to each spark on the train roster each day. And, for the first time since Till moved in, Melanie had unlocked and rolled over a chair in the nose beside her own. Javi, front and center in the third chair, studiously ignored them, headphones on. Melanie ate like a woman who didn’t think about her food, no concentration on her plate, perfect efficiency, eyes never fully leaving Till. 

“Your boots were unsealed.” 

Till paused, her own bit of green halfway to her mouth. “Huh?” 

“You don’t know how to put on a breach suit. You could’ve opened that door and frozen from the ankles up. You came in anyway. Why?”

Till crossed her ankles and rubbed them up and down the backs of her calves, glad she’d kept on her soft, warm pj's. “I couldn’t figure out how to work the mic.” 

Melanie tipped her head, the line of her jaw pulling into stark relief. Arms folded over her chest. “That’s not why.” 

Stomach tight, Till looked away. “I said I’d have your back, didn’t I?” 

“You did. I’m still trying to make sense of that, too.” She leaned further back in the chair, yet her piercing stare only seemed to get closer. “You weren’t just muscle, today.” 

“And you’re not just the voice of the train,” Till snapped, feeling unbalanced, exposed. 

Melanie’s thin, unpainted lips twitched up in a wry smile. “Never was.” 

She waited out Till’s silence. Of course Till broke first. 

“We just got the train. I’m not losing it, alright? Whatever it takes, I’m keeping this. We’re keeping this.” 

“Even if that means shacking up here, in Mr. Wilford's office, with the evil woman who had them eating each other for lunch?” 

Discomfort roiled in her gut. “You picked us, at the end.” 

“I picked the train. I will always pick her, Brakeman.”

“Till,” Till snapped. “Just Till. I work for you, now, and you don’t have Brakemen anymore.” 

“Till,” Melanie agreed evenly, and Till clenched her nails into her palms. 

“What is this? Are you trying to piss me off? It’s not hard,” she pushed out. “I’m pretty sure I hate your guts, but I’m not blind. I know without you, this train breaks apart in pieces in a week.” 

In the ensuing silence, Till finally looked back over into Melanie’s eyes. 

She had that look on again. The one that made Till feel like a specimen in a jar, equal parts studied and incapable of understanding the motive of the larger-than-life eyes staring down at her. 

“Just _pretty_ sure?” she said at last. 

Till, who’d barely realized she said that part aloud, flushed. 

“If this is what you’ll do for me when you hate me, imagine what we could accomplish if you liked me.” Her chair rolled closer. She leaned in, tilting her head back so she was the one, now, looking up at Till. “What do you think?” she said. “Could you like me?” 

Playfully, she batted her lashes, all at once a dash of teasing innocence tossed in between the deadly control, and Till felt a jolt through her she could only hope was invisible in her eyes, a stab of honest to god _want_ way stronger than she’d ever acknowledged before. 

She shoved back. “Fuck. Stop. We could have all died today, Melanie. I was just doing what I said I would. That’s it.” 

Melanie’s eyes turned serious. “Till.” 

She reached out and clasped onto Till’s hand. Hers were chilly. Strong, but deceptively delicate. Till couldn’t think about Melanie’s hands. Not like this, not right now. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t say this first— thank you.” 

There it came, the squeeze, and with it a curl of Melanie’s thumb against the back of her hand. 

“You were right to be afraid.” 

“I wasn’t—”

“You’d have been an idiot not to be, with what you heard. If you hadn’t come in when you did…” 

All at once, Melanie hung her head. A flash of her — small, vulnerable, despite the dead body in her room and her calm, even words — came back to Till from the first night, the ghost of the week before. 

“... I was getting ready to tell you to cut us loose.” 

A violent shiver raced up Till’s spine. “No,” crawled out of her, bitter and small, and she knew why. Knew it was the thought of cutting Melanie loose to freeze, not the Breach Team, not all forty cars of Alice behind, that she refused to think would have happened, could have happened, under her watch. A funny part of her brain was saying _I’m still a Brakeman_ even though it was completely untrue, but it was about responsibility. The responsibility was true. 

“You can’t keep doing this,” she said, all in one burst of air. “You can’t always be the one going out there, being up here when — You’re going to get yourself killed, and then what? And then—” 

“That’s why you’re here, aren’t you?” Icicle-fingers, hot against her cheek all over again, hot as a brand, hot as the first sting of frostbite before it ate your nerves alive. “To keep me safe?” 

Melanie had leaned very, very close. Till’s eyes flickered to her lips. 

She panicked, shoved her chair back, and fled the engine. 

Melanie didn’t let her get away. Till stood, facing the wall, facing nothing, breathing too fast, nails digging into palms. She heard Melanie’s footsteps behind her, almost silent: boots off, but the hem of the loosened breach suit’s pants slid along the floor plates, closer and closer, slow and even. 

“I’ve been trying to understand how it's personal for you. What I did _to you._ ” 

Till tensed, but didn’t turn around. 

“I have to say I’m drawing a blank.” 

Step- _sishh._

“I hired you for a job you wanted. Not this one — for the Brakemen. I read every resume. I recognized your potential. Then, I saw how happy you made Jinju. Approved you for Second.” 

Step- _sishhh._

She flinched when fingers tugged the collar of her t-shirt, pinching it between thumb and forefinger, knuckles grazing her back as she toyed idly with Till’s still-pajamas, Till’s heartbeat. 

“Stood with you, at the end.” 

A nail dragged through the hair at the nape of her neck. Maybe accidental, but something snapped. Till whipped around, put a hand in the center of Melanie’s chest. Forced her back a step. Not hard, just very, very insistent. Space to breathe. She needed space to breathe. 

“You _tortured_ people,” she said. 

Melanie’s head tilted in that infuriating way, the way that made her blood run hot and pound, dizzy, in her temples. 

“And that’s personal, to you? Jackboots tortured people. Brakemen tortured people.” 

“In your name,” Till hissed. 

“Sometimes,” Melanie agreed. “Sometimes, just because they had the power to.” 

Till thought of Osweiler. Thought of revolution one, when a brute of a Jackboot thought she looked small enough to force himself on even in uniform. He got a fist full of it. But he stayed with the boots till they were out in the ice. 

“Is that why you did it?” She realized she still had a hand on Melanie’s chest, nearly at her throat. She pulled herself back, hard, all but driving her own elbow into her gut. “Is that why you took that boy’s mom, strapped her down and started icing bits off of her while she cried and screamed and—” 

The flash of surprise in Melanie’s eyes felt good, for a second. Then, she just felt hollow. She hadn’t meant to say it. Ever. Melanie didn’t know. Didn’t ever have to know. 

But now she did. 

Her face was closed again. Eyes dark, but empty. The breach suit had been peeled off her shoulders, hung off her hips, lean, strong arms exposed by the white hospitality undershirt she wore beneath. Hipbones out with a flash of exposed skin. It was unfair, Till thought, that she could be what she was, and look like that. Like this. 

“Do you know what made me angriest, of all of Wilford’s fantasies?” 

Till blinked. Frowned. “You telling me about what you saved us from isn’t an excuse for what you did.” 

Melanie ignored her completely. “He wanted to fill every Ag-Sec car with sugar maple. He wanted syrup, sweets, rich desserts and pancakes more than he cared that sugar maples couldn’t survive in our boron-heavy soil, are so susceptible to blight from weakening in the warmer air before the freeze they’d have destroyed our other crops. That even if we found them healthy, they would have had to be planted alone, rotated with an extreme depletion of power to let them reach the hard freeze they need for dormancy, without letting the cold break them, without making passengers dress up in breach suits to pass through the car. None of that mattered to him. I would come to him with hard, real answers, and he would send me off to ‘make it possible.’ 

“I made so many things possible. But in the end, I just… said yes. I said yes, then planted water maple instead. Look out the window. We’re passing through acres of its frozen sisters - the most common tree in America, before the freeze. Hardy. Fast-growing. Good for paper and sugar, but less sweet. What would it matter. We wouldn’t remember that kind of luxury, without conditions. We have gray alder in the compost and scrap cars to pull nitrogen from the air and return it to the soil, not because Mr. Wilford wanted it, but because he believed me when I said he probably didn’t want apricots growing on top of the dead bodies, so I could do what _I_ wanted there. 

“You know what I could have done today.” She wasn’t asking. “I thought about it, too. Puncture Alice from the outside. Do worse than that scrap of some collapsed Chicago crossbeam jammed in the seal already had. Rip her through and run. Three cars. Three cars up, and tell you to pull. You’d have pulled, wouldn’t you? I saw it in your eyes.” She reached out, cupped Till’s cheek even as she flinched back. “You want to trust me, to listen to me. That’s not something I’ve had much of, here. People want to listen to Mr. Wilford. Not some lady engineer. But you would have pulled the lever, and I would have left him out in the snow all over again.” 

Till couldn’t find the words to say no, no, she had never thought it, not for one second, because now it was obvious as hell, wasn’t it? She should have. She should be more paranoid with this woman than she ever had with a shit-stirrer in lockup. She should be ashamed. 

“Well, why didn’t you?” 

Melanie studied her for a second longer, then let go. “That isn’t my call, anymore. I meant what I said. It’s Layton’s turn to choose who lives and who dies. It’s my job to keep the train running.” 

She stepped in again, and Till didn’t put her hand up to stop her. 

“I’m not going to say you’ll never see me making a choice like that again. I’m saying this to be clear. I’m not heartless, Till. I do what has to be done even when it makes me sick.” 

A flash of memory, of Melanie’s paler-than-death face coming through the frosting door of her office, leaving Josie inside. She felt her own hands begin to shake, remembering holding the nozzle, shocked by even the proximate cold of it, numbing the air and her actions equally, until she saw the gray-pink cracked all the way to the wrist. 

“You have a moral compass I’d envy, somewhere else.” 

Melanie was lifting her hand again, and when a thumb brushed over her bottom lip, Till went utterly still. 

“I see you. It makes sense, now. The struggle in your eyes every time I’ve said ‘Thank you.’ I don’t think I get the luxury of that, yet. Your surety. But I will try,” she said, voice dropping to a murmur. “Not to ask you to violate yours.” 

Warning bells were sounding, ringing, vibrating up and down Till’s spine. 

“Now, I think the question sits with you. Is that enough?” 

Closer, and Till couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Melanie’s thighs pressed against her. Her oversize shirt static-clung to the hospitality polyester. Their breasts brushed. 

“Will you trust me?” Nails gripped the back of her neck. Not gently. “Now that I know you’ll kill me if I don’t live up to it?” 

“I didn’t mean— I wouldn’t—”

But she did, didn’t she? What else did she think Josie would try to do, in that room. Would she, again? 

Till was pretty sure she hated Melanie Cavill. 

But she didn’t know. 

“You’re panicking,” Melanie said, and the nails at the back of her neck quieted, turning into stroking fingertips. Blood rushed back into the crescent-mark indentations, and the hit of warmth plus the teasing touch suddenly told Till’s brain _“Kiss her!”_ which was exactly the wrong thing, exactly the brain bit she’d been trying to quash for weeks now. 

“I’m not trying to hurt you, Bess.” 

Her name, like hearing it could pick her up by the shoulders and throw her out in the snow. How had she never noticed just how perfectly eye-to-eye they were? 

“I just want things to be clear between us.” 

Till swallowed hard. She stared over Melanie’s shoulder, losing her nerve to look her in the eye. She could see straight through to Melanie’s open bunk, a single yellow coneflower severed in a beaker of water, petals still fresh and bright. 

“I don’t want to hurt you either,” Till confessed, voice choked and strange. 

Melanie came just one impossible inch closer, up on tip-toes, forcing Till’s eyes back to hers. 

“Good,” she said, and took Till’s bottom lip between her teeth. 

It was a nip, not a kiss. Till felt somehow scolded, chastised, and forgiven all at the same time. She also felt inflamed. 

“The fuck are you doing,” she gasped, stepping away. 

This time, Melanie didn’t follow. She stayed in the door frame, leaning against it, head cocked, tips of two fingers idly drumming against her own lips. The sudden darkness in her eyes unnerved Till as much as it enticed her. Her lip throbbed its own heartbeat, totally off-pace with the one in her chest. 

“I shouldn’t tease you,” Melanie said, anything but apologetic. “Sometimes, I catch you looking at me in a way I haven’t had a woman look at me in years.” 

Till felt her skin going pale, the words triggering a response in her that was more fear than embarrassment. 

“I’ve missed it,” she admitted, rolling her neck to the side. There was a tiny pout on her lips when she continued. “Do you hate me too much to want me?” 

“Stop it,” Till breathed. 

Melanie’s lips twitched. “You feel it too, don’t you. Viscerally alive, after a moment like we went through back there.” 

Till dug her nails into her palms, hard. 

“You feel the hum, more. The rush of the track under us gets in your blood. She wants us to live. Wants us to survive, always, but right now, like this? To _live._ ” 

She held out a hand, palm down. It drew Till’s eyes like an electromagnet ripped from the Engine Eternal. 

“Live a little, Till. Don’t waste it hating me.” 

She wasn’t going to take the hand. Only then she did, and Melanie’s thin, strong fingers wrapped tight, then tugged, hard, stepping back through the door, back across the narrow burst of blue-and-white-light hallway, into the mass of red lines and pens and papers and Wilford gold that was Melanie’s long-time hidey hole, the surreal seat of power of their very survival. 

But Melanie yanking her hard against her and kissing her for real wasn’t about survival. She was right. It was about living. It was about feeling nails in the cropped-short stubble at the base of her neck, feeling Melanie breathe into her mouth, hot and close and almost laughing as she tugged down the back of Till’s t-shift so hard the collar dug into her throat, made it hard to breathe, made her head spin and her limbs go weak and heavy and a sound leave her mouth she had never, never made before. 

“God, I love your muscles,” Melanie mumbled against her mouth, a hand running down the length of her arm, and Till felt a weird twist of pride, because that meant it wasn’t just her and her fucked up brain, who thought about this before, before the dizzy, train-saving rush of the morning. 

She didn’t have time to dwell on it. Melanie let go of her stranglehold on the back of her shirt and air rushed hard to her head, leaving her swaying for a staggered instant as Melanie grabbed the hem of her t-shirt and ripped it up over her head, almost not getting her arms up in time. 

Melanie’s mouth seared her skin. That heat could burn the blood underneath it. She didn’t wait for Till to catch her breath, she pressed in, pressed lips hot and fast against her throat, her chest. She had a hand on Till’s breast in an instant, and Till had never— This wasn’t— 

This wasn’t how it usually went. Usually, she was the one pulling, pushing, undressing, touching. She was a Brakeman. A cop. She was strong. She had strong features, not pretty ones. If you were the dyke with the wonky nose, you had to get cocky to get laid, get used to making the first move. 

Melanie was making all of them. 

The hand not thumbing over her shockingly hard nipple was shoving down the waistband of her pj pants. 

“Hold up,” Till gasped, because she didn’t just— get naked. Not first. Not while another woman stood over her in fricken breachpants. 

“Why?” Melanie laughed, leaning in to make Till slouch back against the wall, making herself taller. She put both hands on Till’s hips, levered herself up and in to give her another one of those infuriating, inflaming little bites on her bottom lip, a scolding little kiss of air hissing out with it. “I’m not going to fuck you with your pajamas on.” 

“Who said anything about fucking me?” Till gasped out. 

When Melanie’s hands slid fast up her waist to cover a breast each, each just a handful for her, Till let out a noise she desperately didn’t want to have been a whine. Melanie hummed with apparent satisfaction. 

“You’re saying it right now.” 

“Am—” Till started, then her voice broke an octave up on “Not” because Melanie had tilted her head to the side and, still looking up at her with those inhumanly clear green-gray eyes, captured her nipple between her teeth. She toyed with it for a moment, and it was indecent, really, that she kept her lips parted, forced Till to stare as her tongue coiled over the violently red tip, or look away. 

“Are too,” she said without letting go, and the little flex in the pressure of her teeth sent Till’s blood pressure skyrocketing, triggered a primal fear — no, a Melanie fear — that she might bite right through. 

But her tongue slid up and over instead, soothing the sting of blood rushing back in, and Till’s hand fisted in her hair, shocked it was as soft and perfect under her fingers as it always looked, down around her shoulders anytime it wouldn’t be in the way, now. Not like the hospitality days. 

This Melanie was something different, so completely the woman who’d crawled out of execution and into the den of thieves who’d put her there, and never looked back since. 

She couldn’t make herself push her away, pull her off. She just tightened her grip on her hair and held her there, more to anchor herself as she screwed her eyes shut and slammed her head back against the cabinet above her and let Melanie shove her pants down to her knees, let her run those deadly, spidery fingers down her stomach, down her thighs, slide back up and close and — 

“Shit. Yes. Oh, fuck.” 

— in. 

Well. She really should’ve guessed, between the double geek degree, the love of welding, the brainless drive to throw herself into negative hundred degree danger, that Melanie Cavill would know how to fuck a woman. 

Till hadn’t guessed. 

But damn. Melanie did. 

The work pants chafed between her thighs as Melanie used the force of one to drive her hand up and in, let Till grind herself down against it as garbled curses spilled out of her mouth and her hands scrambled at the walls for something to grip onto, felt herself tear papers free, and Melanie didn’t stop, didn’t care, just put her face right in Till’s face so she could skewer her with those eyes, feast on Till’s total loss of control, steal a few of her cries with strange, head-spinning kisses while Till forgot how to care about who was fucking who and just said, “Yes, yes, yes,” until she realized she could still feel the train. She could feel it in the walls under her hands and against her bare ass, and it had the same pulse as Melanie’s thrusts, the same heartbeat as her own cries, and there was something, had to be something fucked up about that, about Melanie Cavill, about their screwed up sacred arc, but all of it was one constant, inescapable thrum of heat, more heat than she ever remembered from the outside world, and the half-formed thought of Melanie fucking her, fucking the train, fucking her with the train? was just more, just hotter, just the through-the-chest-spike of desire that she’d felt when Melanie turned up late to a rebellion against her looking, honestly, like she’d just been doing something like this, sweaty and fire-eyed and ready to destroy anything in the name of being alive. 

And Till heard, “Mel,” gasp off her lips with the pulse and grind of piston and thigh, and that was it, she was coming all over Melanie’s fingers in a strangled yell, feeling the vibration of the engine still rolling through Melanie’s hand on her skin even as it stilled against her, carried her, twitching, down. 

“Good — — _Fuck_ ,” Till finally gasped out, almost unintelligible, wiping a hand over her mouth, up, covering her eyes. “Holy shit.” A little clearer. 

Melanie’s quiet, dark little laugh still made her shudder. It was such an _I told you so_ laugh. Till groaned. 

“Please, take off the damn pants and sit on my face already. If you don’t let me eat you out after that, I think I lose my dyke card for good.” 

To Till’s pleasant surprise, Melanie’s laugh turned very… genuine. 

Even better, she did just what Till asked. 

* * *

After, lying together in Mel’s tiny bunk, Till blissed out and drowning in the scent of her and the soothing hum of her train, some part of her that no one ever liked said, _Okay, now ask the hard questions_. 

“Is this the kind of sex where I get to talk to you, now, or the kind where I should kick myself back to my bunk and pretend it didn’t happen by lunch.” 

“Hmmm.” Melanie trailed a finger up and down Till’s calf, curling it idly around the fine blond hairs there, just firm enough it didn’t tickle. “Think I should do this now?” She ran her whole hand from mid-calf to knee. “I’m not in hospitality skirts anymore.” 

Till blinked. “What, not shave?” 

“I like it on you,” she murmured, returning to the idle tracing. “Peach fuzz. Remember peaches?” 

Till was too stuck on the thought of Melanie Cavill going full train-gay under her engineering grays to come up with an answer for peaches. “You do wear a lot more pants now.” 

The breach suit, slumped on the floor, gave them a continuous, judgmental stare. 

“I miss peaches. I made the call that they were a genetic diversity risk, and too likely to attract moths that would eat other things we couldn’t live without, but it would be so nice to have something that reminds me that much of summer.” 

Till tried to remember what peaches tasted like, but came up short. Not for the first time, she realized seven years in a can made for a whole lot of forgetting. 

Melanie slid lower down in the bunk. Playfully, she teased the skin just above Till’s knee with her teeth, making her foot kick off to the side a little. God, this woman was a biter. 

“Relax.” She let go with a kiss, looking up at her. “I like to talk.” 

Till had forgotten she’d asked. She had one hand behind her head, the other sticking out of the bunk, railing digging into her armpit, flipping a cabinet door she’d knocked open back and forth. She could just see the edges of the photos taped up inside. 

“I thought you’d want to see your kid more. Half thought that’s why I kept finding you downtrain.” 

Melanie was still for a long minute, and Till was totally ready to be tossed out the door at this point, but she crawled up Till’s body again, rolled herself half onto Till’s chest, and looked up at her with serious eyes. When she spoke, her voice came slow, measured. 

“I’m trying… to be patient. And let her come to me. She has half a lifetime of terrible things to think about me. If I try to force her to spend time with me now, I just prove it. Make it worse. It’s eating me up, don’t get me wrong. But after seven years thinking I lost her forever? I can wait.” 

She traced shapes on the top slope of Till left breast. Stars, triangles, squares, spirals. 

“I can let her learn the truth. Good, bad, ugly. From people who aren’t him. She goes to class, now. With other kids her age. I know where she is almost every minute of the day. I feel… so much safer when she’s here, in Snowpiercer, but I can’t — I don’t stop her from going back to Alice every night, alone.” 

Till didn’t know when, but as the words slowed, the shapes had become the letter ‘M’, over and over again. Not blocky, not Wilford font, but curled, like the start of signing a name. 

“I said what I needed to the day Alice locked on.” 

Till remembered. After the link released. After Snowpiercer started drawing straight from Alice’s coffers to set them on her way again, someone had finally tapped Melanie on the shoulder, hunched over a portable console in the Tail, and said, “The Wilford girl says her name’s Cavill.” 

“I love her. I’m sorry. Now, I have to see if it’ll be enough.” 

Slowly, still staring at the ceiling, Till brought her hand down to Melanie’s head. She stroked her now much messier hair. It felt… strange, still. That she was allowed to touch her. That she could have Melanie Cavill sprawled across her, curled in beside her, and not feel… 

Guilty. She didn’t. She felt good, but that was all endorphins. She knew that. And behind it? 

A little sad. A little angry. Maybe that’s all that had been there for a while. 

“How do you not…” She stopped. Cleared her throat. “How are you not just… furious. All the time. At him. At us. At the world.” 

She felt a slow curling of Melanie’s lips against her chest. 

“If you can’t tell that I am… I’m impressed with myself.” 

A few breaths against her skin passed in silence. 

“Anger is a luxury. The train can only sustain so much of it.” 

Till let the words sink in. Thought about them. Really. Thought about the murders. The strikes. The rebellion. She thought, in this, in a few really, really big things, Melanie was… right. Maybe that was what she hated most of all. 

“I don’t get you.” Her voice was ragged, but resigned. “I don’t get how you’re so smart and fuck it up so bad. Like, if you can’t get it right, what chance do the rest of us have?” 

Melanie didn’t answer. Till let go of the cabinet lip and looked down. Strange warmth settled between her lungs. The chief engineer of Snowpiercer was asleep on her chest, frowning a bit, but otherwise calm. 

Till stared back at the ceiling, wondering about anger, and forgetting, and whether, if there was no one left to remember, she could decide peaches taste like women, so women taste like summer, and a tree would fall in the frozen world, and no one could prove her wrong. 


End file.
